RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN. Performing Arts and the City Dutch municipal cultural policy in the Brave New World of evidence-based policy

Transcription

1 RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN Performing Arts and the City Dutch municipal cultural policy in the Brave New World of evidence-based policy Proefschrift ter verkrijging van het doctoraat in de Letteren aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen op gezag van de Rector Magnificus, dr. F. Zwarts, in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 1 juli 2010 om uur door Quirijn Lennert van den Hoogen geboren op 4 juni 1969 te Soest

2 Promotor : Prof.dr. J.J. van Maanen Beoordelingscommissie : Prof.dr. W.E. Krul (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) Prof.dr. D.J. Wolffram (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) Prof.dr. A. Kotte (Universiteit Bern) ISBN :

3 Preface Preface This research project was prompted by my experience as a city functionary for cultural policy with the Municipality of Groningen. Being the largest city in the northern part of the Netherlands the city has known an extended history of cultural production and consumption of various art forms, not in the least the performing arts. Since 1988, the city has developed a cultural-policy cycle in which the cultural sector in the city is evaluated integrally once every four years. In theory, the subsidies for cultural institutions are granted for a four-year period, allowing scope for long-term planning by the institutions. Once every four years, the city government can re-evaluate both the objectives of their cultural policy and the performance of the institutions themselves, and subsequently decide to continue or discontinue a particular subsidy. This presupposes an efficient method of evaluating the contribution of the cultural institutions to city objectives. This type of approach is of even greater importance in view of the fact that the policy documents of the city have shown a broadening of the city s cultural-policy objectives. In 1988, artistic quality was the central feature of the subsidy evaluations. In later years, the contribution to economic development of the city, the city image, and preventing or alleviating social exclusion have become explicit aims of the cultural policy. In theory, cultural institutions should adapt to the changes in policy objectives. In practice, the institutions and who can blame them for that are primarily concerned with their own continuity and are only sporadically willing to support new objectives by adopting new activities which are then added to the existing repertoire of cultural activities in the city. The question concerning the way in which the regular activities of cultural institutions contribute to policy goals that are frequently regarded as being external to the cultural sector itself is rarely answered. And where this type of claim is made, it usually comes in imprecise terms, which make it too elusive for thorough policy evaluation. The argument usually takes the following form: artistic activities contribute to the development of individuals in the city, therefore if there are artistic activities, the city s population will undergo development. The implicit assumption is that the higher the artistic quality of the activities, the greater the chance of development. Thus, cultural quality is once again made the central focus of cultural policy. It is my opinion that cultural policy is not about generating as much cultural quality as possible. It is about the contribution that cultural activities in the city make to the city as a whole. Therefore we should have some cognizant account of how the arts contribute to a city s development, or the development of its inhabitants. On the one hand I agree with those who argue that it is unfair to assign objectives to cultural institutions which they cannot possibly meet. On the other hand, if the defenders of autonomous artistic quality look i

4 Performing Arts and the City to the government to provide public funds to attain this quality, they should be prepared to offer a satisfactory explanation of why this is important to society. This brings me to the second reason for setting up the research project. In my experience as an official for cultural policy, I have witnessed a tendency to objectify government policy. In recent years the relationship between government, professional institutions and citizens has been reinvented. The neo-liberal policies of smaller and efficient government have led to a situation where governmental bodies see themselves as agents who buy certain services from professional institutions and distribute them to their citizens. These citizens demand value for money. Although the privatization of the provision of services may have been successful in many cases, such as in the telecommunications industry, it remains to be seen whether or not this development has been salutary within the cultural sector. Obviously, the freedom of private initiatives in implementing cultural policies is crucial, as is their autonomous development. However, these developments also have led to an orientation of policy towards a certain accountability with respect to the effects that have been generated. For the cultural policy, this means that referring to the artistic quality that has been generated (and evaluated by specialists in independent advisory boards) is no longer enough. An account of the societal effects this quality has given (or will give) rise to is also needed. In Dutch city politics, this tendency has been reinforced by the introduction of duality in local administration. Up to 2002, the board of mayor and alderman was part of the city council and voted on its own proposals to the city council. Since 2002 this has no longer been the case, and the board of mayor and aldermen has received greater executive responsibilities while the controlling instruments of the city council have been strengthened, thus promoting political debate on the evaluation of policies. Therefore the political importance of policy evaluation has dramatically increased. In several cases, including the city of Groningen, these changes have led to a reorganization of the city administrative bodies, with the introduction of specific departments for producing policy evaluation in order to cater efficiently to the politician s need for data on performance. The implicit assumption in staffing such departments is that youth policy or policies directed towards the elderly can be evaluated in the same way, as long as the indicators for evaluation have been chosen. This may well be the case, but it is my view that cultural-policy evaluation implies a thorough knowledge of the effects of cultural quality in and on society. Because of the fact that, in financial terms, cultural policy is usually a very small department when compared to education and health policy, this specific knowledge is not available in such dedicated policy-evaluation departments. This means that, in the future, impossible standards for cultural policy are likely to be generated, which may harm the cultural sector. Instead of making clear what the cultural sector s contribution to a city actually is, these departments may only indicate that the sector is constantly falling short of policy expectations. This may weaken the political support for cultural activities in the long run. ii

5 Preface This is why I seized the opportunity to participate in a research project which was offered at the Department for Arts, Culture and Media Studies of the University of Groningen. Professor Hans van Maanen of the department kindly invited me to participate in a group of Ph.D. students convening regularly to discuss their research projects. He also introduced me to the Project on European Theatre Systems (STEP) which started in 2005 with the aim of comparing theatre systems in smaller European countries. The central theme of the project is the assumption that the diversity in European theatre systems also shows a diversity in the societal outcomes of these systems throughout Europe, thus generating very different positions for the theatre in European countries. This being the case, instruments need to be developed within STEP to describe theatre systems for the purpose of comparing them. But instruments to describe the outcomes of the theatre systems are also needed. My research project is a contribution to this last issue. Because of the fact that this research is part of STEP, this book has been written in English. Although the research primarily focuses on the Dutch policy system, I hope that this book will provide researchers, officials and managers within cultural institutions in other countries with helpful concepts and tools for dealing with these issues. Writing a Ph.D. thesis has proven to be a challenging endeavour in which I have experienced that pushing forward in my investigations as any Ph.D. candidate will have experienced meant writing more and more about less and less. Empirically testing the model for evaluating cultural policy turned out to be unfeasible in this project. Further studies will be burdened with this task. None the less, I hope to have been able to make a valuable contribution to the field of cultural policy. It is a contribution which would not have been possible without the help of a number of people. First of all I thank my supervisor, Professor Hans van Maanen for his invitation to participate in his department s Ph.D. project and for his comments on the drafts of this book. These comments and his general stimulation have made this endeavour challenging and invigorating right up to the end. I should also thank Dr Miranda Boorsma who acted as co-supervisor during the largest part of the research. I have greatly benefited from her expertise in cultural economics and arts marketing. The professional contributions as well as the friendship of these two supervisors have helped bring this work to fruition. From the circle of Ph.D. candidates I am greatly indebted to Marlieke Wilders whose research subject touched mine so consummately. Collaborating with her and Kim Joostens brought continual inspiration. Their comments have steered me in many right directions. I should also express my gratitude towards the students in my Arts Policy course who provided the first empirical material for Chapter 11 of this book. From the circle of colleagues in public administration I should mention the stimulation offered by Tineke Bennema and Henk Hofstra who were so kind as to allow me time to do this research, and who also discussed the topics of various chapters at great length. Furthermore, I thank Erik Akkermans who was so kind as to read the drafts of this manuscript and comment on them. His assertion of the topicality of this research project was important to keep going. iii

6 Performing Arts and the City The support and stimulation of numerous people in my personal surroundings cannot go unmentioned. I am especially grateful to Harold who provided the homes to do my research in. His constant love and admiration are the most powerful factors behind this book. I also am greatly indebted to my parents who raised me with a firm belief in my own capabilities, the greatest gift parents can bestow upon their children. Without such firm belief, endeavours such as writing a Ph.D. thesis are not possible. Quirijn Lennert van den Hoogen March 2010 iv

7 Contents PERFORMING ARTS AND THE CITY DUTCH MUNICIPAL CULTURAL POLICY IN THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF EVIDENCE-BASED POLICY 1

8 2 Performing Arts and the City

9 Contents Contents Introduction 7 PART I: FUNCTIONING OF THE PERFORMING ARTS IN DUTCH CULTURAL POLICY Performing Arts in Urban Society: Preliminary Definitions Definitions of Culture and Art in Dutch Cultural Policy Culture, Art and Identity: Views from Theory Functioning of Culture and Art in Urban Society Political Orientation and Cultural Policy in the Netherlands Political Statements about Culture, Art and Society in the Netherlands: the National Government : Investing in Culture : Armour or Backbone : Culture as Confrontation : More than the Sum Functions of (Performing) Arts in the State Policy Documents Developments in Dutch Cultural Policy Political Statements about Culture, Art and Society in the Netherlands: City 87 Government 3.1. Rotterdam Utrecht Maastricht Groningen Arnhem Breda, Apeldoorn, Zwolle Summary Political Views on the Functioning of the Performing Arts in Society A Comparison of the National and City Cultural Policy Documents Functions of the Performing Arts in Urban Society in Dutch Cultural Policy Questions for Further Research 163 3

10 Performing Arts and the City PART II: INTRINSIC FUNCTIONING OF THE PERFORMING ARTS Autonomy, Processes of De-Autonomization and Functioning in Urban Society Art Works and their Functioning in Society: Institutional and Functional 168 Paradigms 5.2. Autonomy and Processes of De-Autonomization in the Institutional Paradigm Autonomy and Processes of De-Autonomization in the Functional Paradigm Cultural Diversity Intrinsic and Extrinsic Functioning and Artistic Quality Summary: Autonomy in Relation to Functioning in Society Aesthetic Experience Descriptions of Aesthetic Experience The Artistic Nature of Aesthetic Experience Summary: Intrinsic Values and Functions of the Performing Arts Aesthetic Experience and Functioning in Society: Intrinsic Functioning from 235 Theory and Policy Practice 7.1. Functioning of the Performing Arts in Society under Conditions of Autonomy Relating the Intrinsic Functions from Theory to Those in the Policy 240 Documents 7.3. The Value of Development of Ways of Expression 247 PART III: EXTRINSIC FUNCTIONING OF THE PERFORMING ARTS Extrinsic Functioning of Performing Arts: Cultural Policy and Economy Economic Functioning in the Policy Documents Impact Analysis The Relationship between Creativity and Economic Performance City Image and City Regeneration Summary: the Functioning of the Performing Arts in the Economic Domain Extrinsic Functioning of the Performing Arts: The Social Domain Social Policy Issues in the Cultural Policy Documents The Individual, Society and Community Social Policy in Relation to Art Policy: Views from Cultural Sociology Personal Development in Relation to the Community: Knowledge, Skills and 284 Personal Identity 9.5. From the Personal to the Collective Level: Community Identity and 292 Community Development 9.6. A Theory of Arts Functioning in the Social Domain 305 4

11 Contents 10. Towards a Framework to describe the Functioning of the Performing Arts in 313 Society The Framework for Describing the Functioning of the Performing Arts in 313 Society Implications for Policy Evaluation and Measurement 324 PART IV: POLICY EVALUATION Evaluation of Cultural Policy: Current Evaluation Methods in Practice and in Theory How Dutch Municipalities Currently evaluate Arts Policy Policy Evaluation in Theory Conclusions: Arts Policy Evaluation in Theory and Praxis Policy Evaluation using the Framework for the Functioning of Performing Arts in Society A Model for Evaluating Performing Arts Policy: What should be measured? Measuring the Functioning of the Performing Arts in Society for Policy Evaluation Organizing Art Policy Evaluation Summary References 417 Dutch Summary 435 5

12 6 Performing Arts and the City

13 Introduction Introduction In March 2007 two youngsters were killed in Rotterdam. They had participated in rap battles in youth centres in the city. Such rap battles popular amongst youngsters of Antillean, Surinamese and Cape-Verdian descent consist of improvised raps in which youths battle live. The improvised song texts involve glorifying oneself or disrespecting the opponent ( dissing ). Two participants in such a battle had lost their lives because opponents took violent revenge after the rap battle was over. The Telegraaf (a Dutch national daily newspaper) added in a maliciously short aside that such battles are organized with subsidies from the city. 1 Though the article did not make clear whether or not the subsidies involved stem from cultural policy measures or are part of another policy area such as welfare or youth policies, the incident evokes concern for the effects that subsidized activities may have in society. A second example: in the summer of 2001 the city of Groningen organized a large-scale cultural event called Blue Moon. The city has an established reputation for organizing events that take the arts to the streets, with architecture and the performing arts being combined to produce new public buildings, such as a bus stop by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas in which art videos can be shown, and a floating performance stage designed by Zaha Hadid. Blue Moon was intended to do two things: (1) the festival should give the city (inter)national exposure and (2) at its location, the citizens of Groningen should become acquainted with the site where an entire new city district was to be built including a new football stadium. The festival programme included visual-art presentations in derelict industrial buildings on the site, the performance of a new play based on the legend of King Arthur by the Groningenbased theatre company Noord Nederlands Toneel (NNT) and a cornfield maze, designed by visual artist and theatre-maker Sjoerd Wagenaar. It was planted on the site of the new football field and was used for children to go treasure hunting. During the preparatory stages in city politics the festival costs were publicly defended by the alderman for spatial planning, while the department of spatial planning handled the organization. Though the individual projects met with favourable reviews and seats to the play and tickets for the maze were sold out, the general feeling after the festival was that it had failed to meet expectations, even though the opening of the festival had made the national news on television. International coverage of the festival was restricted to the architecture press and visits to the festival site by city residents were greatly disappointing, the ghastly summer weather of 2001 being only partially an explicatory factor. The political aftermath of the festival was handled by the alderman for cultural policy who took a different line of defence 1 See De Telegraaf of 29 July 2007 ( accessed on 30 July 2007.) 7

14 Performing Arts and the City than his colleague for spatial planning. He argued in favour of the artistic quality of the productions realized and did not look at the wider intentions of the festival on which it clearly had not delivered. In a discussion with city officials, Koos Terpstra, the erstwhile artistic director of the Noord Nederlands Toneel, explained that he was not aware of the intention to encourage the citizens of Groningen to explore this new part of town. He even claimed that, if he had known this was the purpose of the festival, he would not have produced a theatre performance at all. He simply would have put an advertisement in the local paper claiming that he would bury a thousand guilders somewhere on the festival terrain each day. This would certainly have attracted flocks of citizens to the site, as the city politics wanted. 2 The above two instances are taken from the world of cultural policy. 3 They are both instances of things going wrong, leading to concerns that public money was being spent with only negative or insignificantly positive results. On the one hand such concerns seem justified. When individuals spend money on a product or service they expect it to satisfy the intended purposes. A taxi should take one from A to B. A dry-cleaner should remove the stains from a suit. So why should a city administration not expect positive outcomes from the aesthetic activities it subsidizes? 4 On the other hand the question may be posed as to whether or not the expectations were justified with regard to the aesthetic activities in the examples above. One does not expect a dry-cleaner to bring one from A to B and a taxi driver to clean a suit. Can participation in a rap battle alleviate tensions rather than bringing them up to a boiling 2 The author here refers to his experience as an official for the city at that time. 3 Cultural policy usually refers to policies directed at the arts, cultural heritage (museums, monuments and archives), media and libraries. Hoefnagel rightfully claims that when adopting a broader concept of culture (see the anthropological meaning of the word as referred to in section 1.1) education policies and policies directed towards religious organizations are relevant as well. Government intervention covering religious organizations usually is very limited, and is most notably geared towards mental health issues (Hoefnagel, 1992, pp. 21-3). Note that Hoefnagel does not include international cultural policy in his broad concept). Thus cultural policy can extend well beyond the responsibilities of a Minister, State Secretary or alderman for culture. Such a broad definition of the term cultural policy is not necessary for the present research, as it focuses on the performing arts. Therefore the term art policy is more correct. The use of this term, however, does not imply that all outcomes of art policy are in fact artistic. This will be discussed at length in Chapter 6. Note that though the focus of this research is on art policy, the term cultural policy will be used regularly as this is the most common term in academic and policy praxis. Furthermore it is important to note that the term policy can give rise to misunderstandings. In this research policy shall refer to the measures taken by governmental bodies such as the state or city governments. The field of cultural policy also includes the measures cultural organizations implement themselves, such as elaborate marketing schemes or human resources management. In this research the policies of cultural institutions will be denoted by the term management. 4 The term aesthetic in this research will refer to that which is perceptually discernable. This definition derives from Robinson (2006 [2005]) who writes in the Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: The term aesthetics derives from the Greek word aesthesis, meaning perception. The German rationalist philosopher Alexander Baumgarten coined the term in 1735 to mean the science of sensory perception, which was designed to contrast with logic, the science of intellect ( ) and ever since, the term aesthetic has kept its connotation to the perceptually discernable (Robinson, 2005, p. 73). 8

15 Introduction point with devastating results? Can an arts festival produce exposure for a city and make citizens want to discover a new part of town? In other words, can aesthetic activities provide for non-aesthetic outcomes in society? These are questions that are hugely relevant in cultural policy and have been debated at length. Current policy trends make this debate more acute than ever. New Public Management In public administration there is growing interest in policy evaluation and a subsequent interest in the measurement of performance of government organizations and subsidized institutions. This has resulted from a changed style in public administration, which Belfiore (2004) amalgamates under the name New Public Management (NPM). It consists of a cluster of managerial principles and ideas that have been transferred from the administrative practice of the private sector to public management. The key features of NPM are cost control, financial transparency, the introduction of market mechanisms into the provision of public services (such as tendering or pitching) 5 and reliance on a contract culture. For the present research, a very important feature of NPM is the enhancement of accountability to customers for the quality of service through the use of performance indicators. Politicians increasingly rely on audits to legitimize public policy (De Bock et al., 1996, p. 9). Though one might expect that this type of trend is specific to the historically developed political systems of a nation, it appears to occur internationally. Initiatives that would lead to NPM can be discerned in the UK as early as The Financial Management Initiative, instigated by the then new Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, required each spending department as well as their subordinate agencies to clearly identify their objectives and set targets against which their performance could be measured. Significantly, this practice was also extended to those spheres of activity where performance was not easily quantifiable (and the cultural sector undoubtedly belongs to this group) (Belfiore, 2004, p. 191). Local governments were effected as well. In the mid-1980s the Compulsory Competitive Tender was introduced for a number of services previously provided by the local authorities themselves. This meant a fundamental shift in the role of the authorities, from provider to enabler. Under the New Labour government, the CCT was replaced by the scheme of Best Value. Local authorities were obliged to relate the quality of services to the values these services provide for clients. This meant setting standards and measurement procedures for the quality of public service provision. Furthermore local authorities were obliged to perform a general performance review every five years (ibid, p. 193). 5 Such techniques imply that a government agency asks private institutions to bid for a specified service to be delivered in much the same way as contractors are chosen to realize new buildings once they have been designed. Such techniques have also been applied in Dutch municipal cultural policies. In the city of Zwolle, the administration put out a tender for the organization of a cultural festival (see Chapter 11). In the city of Groningen, a pitch was organized for the programming of a multi-media exhibition space in the city centre in

16 Performing Arts and the City In the United States, an important early initiative was the reinvention of government. This initiative was led by Vice President Albert Gore and involved the publication of the National Performance Review (NPR). This document emphasizes the importance of a customer focus and performance measurement for governmental agencies (Kaplan and Norton, 1996, p. 180). NPR s aim is to develop outcome measures, rather than the usual focus of public employees on the process. The four perspectives of the Balanced Score Card a technique originally developed for the private sector (see section ) are viewed as relevant for performance measurement, adding a fifth perspective: employee empowerment to emphasise the role that federal employees must play in the new, more customer-focused approach for government agencies (ibid., p. 181). In a book with the provocative title Challenging the Performance Movement, Radin describes further efforts of the federal government to improve performance through the use of performance measurement, amongst which the most notable was the adoption of a federal law, the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) in It is the basis for a process undertaken in 2001 in the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) called the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), which attempts to link executive branch budget recommendations to the performance of specific federal programs. Governors offices and state-level agencies (particularly in the education sector) have adopted report cards that seek to rate the performance of specific program areas against other state, local or federal agencies. ( ) In a 1998 study, 47 out of 50 states had adopted some form of performance budgeting. Quarterly reports of profit levels by corporations are actually required as a form of performance, accountability, and transparency. Through the World Bank and other international bodies, countries have been encouraged to devise methods of assessing performance of public sector activities. (Radin, 2006, p. 7) Though she does not oppose the incentive behind the performance movement, which is fundamentally a desire for the government to be publicly accountable for its actions, Radin does discredit the assumptions behind the movement, most notably its mechanistic view of society. She argues for approaches to performance measurement that are multi-dimensional and thus are able to allow for differences in the pursued values between social groups and the complexities of contemporary society in which cause-and-effect relations are not straightforward. Evaluation should involve expert knowledge on these cause-and-effect relationships (Radin, 2006, pp ). However, she does not develop such approaches herself. For the Dutch national government, the Netherlands witnessed abundant growth in policy areas in the 1970s. This raised questions as to the necessity of these policies and their contribution to problems in society (Bressers, 2003, p. 173). In contrast to the expectations of the 1960s and 1970s, the 1980s ushered in more moderate expectations as to what government can do to steer or influence society. The traditional view of social engineering with a government as central actor was mitigated. The complexities of society were taken into greater consideration. With this shift, interest in information on the effects of public policies and their efficiency grew (Janssen en Hellendoorn, 1999, p. 11). As a consequence, policy evaluation has risen strongly since the 1980s. On the national level, the Algemene Rekenkamer (Netherlands Court of Audit) systematically reports on the efficiency of policies 10

17 Introduction and is critical of policies that have no measurable targets. Whereas some decades ago these reports were used by the Ministries, the Prime Minister now is summoned to Parliament to debate the report. As of 2000, Verantwoordingsdag (Accountability Day, the third Tuesday of May) has become a fixed tradition within the parliamentary year. The Minister of Finance and the President of the Algemene Rekenkamer report on policy implementation. 6 In 1999 the national government initiated the project entitled Van Beleidsbegroting tot Beleidsverantwoording (VBTB, From Policy Budget to Policy Accountability). In January 2002 this resulted in a guideline for all Ministries that states that every policy objective will be evaluated at least once every five years (Ministerie van Financiën, 2003, p. 7). One of the main goals of the VBTB is to make budgeting in public administration result-oriented. Whereas the budgets and accounts in Dutch public administration were structured according to expenditures, the new scheme focuses on answering the questions: What do we want to achieve? What will be done to achieve this? What are the costs of these efforts? At the end of the fiscal year, the accounts are structured to answer the questions: What did we want do achieve? What did we do to achieve this? Did these efforts cost what we expected? This new scheme alone prompts interest in policy evaluation and quick and reliable performance indicators to include in the budgets and accounts. This type of budget was first introduced at national level and also on municipal level in 2004 (see Van der Knaap, 2000 and 2006). They will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 11. New Public Management is also behind some major management changes that have occurred in local government in the Netherlands since The ambitious Public Management Initiative (in Dutch: Project Beleids- en Beheersinstrumentarium), which ran from 1987 tot 1995, aimed to make political and administrative decision-making more transparent, and to bridge the gap between authorities and citizens. It focused on the introduction of decentralized organization units and particularly on the development of product budgets and related annual reports including all kinds of performance information (Ter Bogt, 2006, p. 3). The PMI was followed by further initiatives at local level of which the introduction of programme budgets and accounts (see above) is the most recent development. The factors initiating these changes included budget cuts and more demanding citizens/voters, but also uncertainty amongst politicians, which was instigated by the increased political volatility amongst the electorate. This factor suggest that, now and in the near future, for politicians and professionals it could be politically rational to try to increase the (economic) performance of their organizations (Ter Bogt, 2006, p. 1). As a result of these organizational changes within government bureaucracies, the responsibilities for policy formulation and implementation have been split up and much of the policy implementation has been privatized. This has led to tensions between policy devisors and executors. As the policy 6 See accessed on 20 July

18 Performing Arts and the City devisors regard themselves as responsible for steering the executors, their interest in the results of policy execution is strengthened (see De Bock et al., 1996, pp. 9-11). NPM has been introduced in other countries as well, see Lindqvist (2007 and 2008) for the Scandinavian countries and De Cea (2008) for Chile. Gray though recognizing that NPM manifests itself differently in each country owing to the historic development of its democratic structures argues that its underlying principles are generic. The shift originated in the perceived failure ( ) of the post-wwii welfare state ( ) in many Western societies during the economic turmoil of the 1970s (Gray, 2007, p. 208, see also Belfiore, 2004). In the Netherlands this shift is known as the debate on the social engineering (maakbaarheid van de samenleving). Gray argues that his led to a systemic change in the structure and the financing of the entire public sector. The shift should be characterized as a redefinition of value, marked by a shift from intrinsic notions of use to extrinsic notions of exchange-value. In effect goods and services are redefined in terms of how they are to be understood, their social role is redesigned, and the management of them requires change for the most efficient and effective realization of their exchange status (Gray, 2007, p. 208). He denotes this as the commodification thesis. In practice, NPM comes down to a trend towards increased accountability of public policy through the use of management techniques from the private sector. Its general aim is to generate trust in, and legitimacy for, public decision-making by providing evidence of its transparency, effectiveness and efficiency. NPM leads to several consequences in public administration practices that are common to many Western countries. The first is the delegation of policy execution to decentralized business units within the public administration but more frequently to privatized institutions. The subsidy agreements with these institutions also underwent changes. Whereas, up to the 1980s, these organizations were financed on the basis of their operational costs ( input financing) the subsidies now are being related to the outputs and outcomes with the government acting as a contractor towards subsidized institutions. This is a trend that prompts questions on measures relevant for the capture of outputs and outcomes. Thus, as well as issues of efficiency and quality, policy evaluation also became important within the subsidized institutions themselves (De Bock et al., 1996, pp ). The second consequence is a growing political interest in policy evaluation which feeds into the need for data on policy execution. Such data should be provided through clear performance indicators, preferably quantitative ones. Ironically, though the NPM movement has been instigated by a general resentment of the possibilities of social engineering which largely stems from a (post-modern) recognition of the complexities of society and the limited possibilities of government to actually steer societal developments its techniques mainly depend on very mechanistic (modern) views on society because they presume clear causeand-effect relationships and the possibility of encapsulating intricate societal phenomena in quantitative performance measures. The NPM newspeak suddenly recaptures the aura of modernistic engineering. 12

19 Introduction New Public Management and Art Policy Gray has developed his commodification thesis specifically to study culture and art policy. He writes: The commodification thesis ( ) serves to re-focus the attention of policy makers away from the internal detail of policy itself and towards the manner in which policy as a whole contributes towards commodified forms of exchange relationships and social behaviours. The instrumentalization of policy embodies this ideological change by ensuring that considerations that are external to the content of the policy sector itself receive much greater attention than had previously been he case, and become much more central to the consideration of what public policies are meant to achieve. (Gray, 2007, p. 210) This means that NPM by its very nature leads to growing emphasis on instrumental legitimization of cultural and arts policies. Instrumental cultural policies are policies in which cultural ventures and cultural investments are used as a means or instrument to attain goals in areas other than cultural ones. The core of instrumental policies is that they emphasize culture and cultural ventures as a means and not as an end in themselves (Vestheim, 1994, p. 65). The structural weaknesses Gray observes in art policy the fact that it receives limited political interest amongst the majority of policy makers and the general public, the fact that it receives little budget from governments compared to other sectors and a lack of political significance (Gray, 2007, p. 210) make the art policy sector specifically vulnerable to instrumentalization, as the development or, in the worst case, the survival, of these policy sectors is dependent on its ability to address issues that are important to other policy areas. Gray denotes this as attachment strategies (ibid., p. 206). Regardless of the evidence base for such claims, the cultural and arts policies have been said to encourage economic growth, reduce public debt, engender urban regeneration, remedy social exclusion and create personal development and community empowerment (ibid., p. 206). These developments have three consequences: 1. There will be increasing emphasis on the benefits of public policy for individual consumers rather than social benefits. 2. Arising from this individualization of policy, public policies will become more selective in terms of their intended audiences and more directed in terms of their intended impact, which feeds into a need for new forms of management information. 3. The financial mechanisms involved can increasingly be expected to leave room for non-state funding mechanisms (ibid. p ). Though in the Netherlands this third step is evident in the national policy document of 2003 (Ministerie van OCW, 2003), this has not led to a substantial redirection of cultural policies away from supply subsidies. Belfiore likewise argues that NPM has enabled an instrumental turn in British cultural and arts policies. Since the 1980s, the instrumental element in the rhetoric of British public arts funding has become more explicit than ever before, overshadowing arguments based on art for art s sake (Belfiore, 2004, p. 188). In line with Gray s first two consequences of the commodification thesis, Belfiore observes that the positive impact of the arts in society have been discussed in ever more precise terms in British policy discourse since around

20 Performing Arts and the City Public investment in the arts is advocated on the basis of what are expected to be concrete and measurable (italics original) economic and social impacts. Moreover, this shift has been accompanied by growing expectations that such beneficial impact ought to be (italics QLvdH) assessed and measured before demands on the public burse can be declared fully legitimate. (Belfiore, 2004, p. 189) Note that in this quote the word investment has apparently replaced subsidy. As a result publicly funded arts organizations have ( ) been involved in the data collection duties that evidence-based policy-making entails. As a consequence, the subsidized arts too ( ) have found themselves forced to turn to the rationalised rituals of inspection (Belfiore, 2004, p. 195). In Britain, the NPM movement in the 1980s was met with studies of the economic impact of the arts in Britain. A study by Myerscough (1988) is credited as the first study of the economic impact of the arts. Belfiore reports that despite well-founded criticisms of this and other reports, the economic impact studies resonated within the British art world and conservative politics (Belfiore, 2002, p. 95). The New Labour government initiated research into the social impact of the arts in conjunction with the Commedia think-tank. 7 Their report on the social impact of participatory arts projects (Matarasso, 1997) will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 9. Though she levels many criticisms at Matarasso s methodology, Belfiore (2002) credits the research for being the first attempt to systematically evaluate the social impact of the arts. 8 Nonetheless she is somewhat uneasy with the report because the importance attributed to social outcomes overshadows aesthetic considerations (ibid, p. 100). Her main concern therefore seems to be that, in instrumental cultural policies, the arts are reduced to a mere tool and become a matter of value for money. Thus, instrumental arts policies will not be sustainable in the long run (ibid, p. 102). Meeting the requirements of NPM in the UK is primarily a task for the country s Arts Council. Not only did the Arts Council of England (ACE) adopt the NPM newspeak, as Belfiore demonstrates (2002 and 2004), it also commissioned several reviews of the impact of the arts. In 2002 the research department of ACE published a document that reviewed literature on the measurement of the impact of the arts (Reeves, 2002). The document aims to provide an overview of art-impact research and to assess the comprehensiveness and quality of the existing evidence base [to the societal benefits of the arts] (ibid., p. 1). The review demonstrates how interest in, and recognition of, the impact of the arts has grown steadily from the 1980s onwards, but it concludes that this research is still in its infancy and that impact research has encountered formidable challenges. 7 Interestingly Belfiore indicates that New Labour s fascination with the social impact of the arts rather than the economic impact which interested the preceding Conservative government should not be regarded as a victory for proponents of the community arts movement which suddenly saw their primary concerns at the centre of political debate. She rather argues that, in the 1980s, the instrumental notion of the arts had affirmed itself within the political and arts community alike, because the arts community had embraced economic rationale as a strategy of survival. Under the new government, the instrumental rational was used with respect to social inclusion by the cultural sector (Belfiore, 2002, pp. 94-5). 8 For further criticisms, see Merli, 2002, and also Matarasso s reaction to both Merli and Belfiore (Matarasso, 2003). Note that in 2009 these criticisms still have not been met with more elaborate methodologies (see Rimmer, 2009). 14

21 Introduction Furthermore, some specific documents on the impact of the arts have been commissioned. Hughes (2002) studied the impact of theatre projects on juvenile offenders, and Carpenter (2003) the impact of active participation in the arts on the social integration of ethnic youths. McDonnell and Shellard (2006) have studied the social impact of theatre in the UK through identifying ten factors that determine impact, both social and economic. Their study describes four case studies, all from theatre practices, which should be considered an exception rather than the rule as they already knew specifically targeted audiences (youth theatre in one case) in the socially motivated theatre practices directed to address issues such as domestic violence and female emancipation. 9 These documents record research into specific situations where art has been applied for the benefit of specifically targeted groups. No research on the general impact of receptive participation in the arts was commissioned, and the research remained vulnerable to charges of being only anecdotal and unsystematic, a remark already made by Reeves (2002). 10 In 2006 the ACE apparently changed tactics by no longer relying on impact analysis. It started The Arts Debate, a project based upon the concept of Public Value (Holden, 2004) which aims to investigate the value of the arts in society in general. Public Value was hailed in as a method that could be used both as a management tool and a measuring instrument for the impact of the arts. It could deal with conflicting values and defines these on the basis of the inclusion of various stakeholders. Its most important feature was, however, that Public Value allowed for the inclusion of intrinsic values which are hard to quantify (see Keaney, 2006, and Bunting, 2006). The concept of Public Value will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 11. Bunting reported on the results of The Arts Debate in Unfortunately the concept has been toned down considerably in the final research design. It did not involve a systematic overview of the values created by aesthetic activities for different stakeholders as is the main tenet of Holden s argument but rather consisted of a qualitative assessment of value creation by ACE staff and a large programme of qualitative assessments by the general public, comprising of 20 discussion groups across the country and in-depth interviews with a large number of members of the arts community and the wider stakeholders of the ACE This is not to suggest that such aesthetic activities lack certain artistic qualities or are less relevant. It is merely to suggest that they do not represent the mainstream of theatre production and reception in the UK. 10 Incidentally Holden (2004) remarks, not entirely without merit, that the criticism about impact research only providing anecdotal evidence is unjustly levelled at arts advocacy studies, while such research methods in disciplines such as the management sciences are entirely justified. There they are called case studies. Van der Knaap (2006) also remarks that case studies can be valuable to test the hypotheses behind policy theories. However, Holden s argument is not entirely convincing because when case studies do not provide information on the circumstances under which beneficial societal impact of the arts is created for a certain type of citizens, these case studies cannot be used to generalize the research findings, as he seems to be aiming at. 11 Though the number of people included in the research is impressive, their selection did not occur at random. People who already had an interest in the arts tended to participate, though the public survey did specifically include respondents from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds. 15

22 Performing Arts and the City Though the debate yielded insights into the values at stake in public funding of the arts and a better understanding of how different organizations within the arts ecology contribute to creating that value (Bunting, 2007, p. 28), the question should be raised as to whether or not the results of the debate can be used for public accountability purposes. Gray analyses severe methodological and analytical drawbacks to raise questions about the extent to which it can effectively serve as an adequate or even appropriate basis for the generation of new approaches to managing and funding the arts (Gray, 2008, p. 210). To Gray, the analytical weaknesses lie in the weak theory of Public Value which, in his view, is not a theory at all but a normative set of assumptions about the role of politicians and public administrators in policy execution and evaluation. He argues that Public Value champions the role of the public manager over politicians who, in his view, are ultimately accountable for the actions of government as they have been elected by the general public. 12 The methodological weaknesses include a non-representative sample which was not sufficiently large to allow for statistic remedies to such a situation (ibid., p. 212). Excluding the goals of public policy, as they are decided upon by politics, and entirely focusing on views expressed by stakeholders and a non-representative section of the general public should therefore be considered as the main weakness of the Arts Debate. Belfiore and Gray s concerns may be right. When instrumental considerations take precedence over aesthetic considerations, art policy and arts practices will be in trouble. But matters may not be so gloomy. The above discussion should be complemented with two important questions: Is it not possible that precisely because of the aesthetic considerations the arts can contribute to policy goals such as social inclusion and economic performance? This involves an investigation into the specific nature of the arts, thus clarifying what the aesthetic values advocated by the authors actually bring about in society. Are the beneficial effects of the arts in society presented as the sole reason for subsidizing the arts or are they considered to be side-effects? This will be investigated on the basis of policy documents referring to Dutch cultural policy. These questions are informed by an alternative view on the functioning of art in society with respect to its autonomy. Boorsma s writings on arts marketing are interesting in this context. She argues (see Boorsma, 2002) that arts marketing has gradually been accepted in the arts world after a situation in which it was considered a swearword as it was deemed fundamentally incompatible with notions of autonomy. A more generic view on marketing as facilitating and stimulating transactions including the exchange of aesthetic values has allowed for the concept s introduction into the art world. The question may rise as to Furthermore it is a matter of discussion why the Department for Culture, Media and Sports were not included among the Art Council s stakeholders. 12 It should be noted that in his review he does not include Holden (2004) who has applied the idea behind Public Value specifically to the arts, though Gray is certainly right in stating that the idea of public value has been interpreted by different theorists in different ways. The concept will be examined to identify promising indicators for policy evaluation only (see section ). 16